MP3 Players: One small stumble for bands, one giant leap for Fankind! (Rio PMP300 32 MB)

Member Name: garrymac

Product:	Rio PMP300 32 MB
Date:	18/09/00 (309 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small and Portable. You will never have to buy a CD or cassette ever again.

Disadvantages: Most of the music you will download will probably be illegal. Quite expensive.

I have a dream. A dream where automobiles can fly through the sky with ease. Where television and books have been abolished and stories and images are transported directly to the brain and every little detail can be remembered with ease. Where people can be transported from one place to another instantly. Where all the body's required food stubstances can be ingested through one small tablet or pill. Where disease no longer exists. Where money has been abolished and everything is free. Where any object can be replicated at will. Where every planet in this galaxy and many others are fully populated and people live in youth forever. Where music can be downloaded directly to the ears where and whenever a person chooses.
Alright so the above paragraph all sounds a bit 'Star Trekky' and far fetched except maybe for the last sentence. This vision might not be so ridiculous. Everything else I have said so far may be thousands of years away but in a way music can be downloaded directly to your ears whenever and wherever you want through the use of MP3 players.
MP3 players are like walkmans or personal CD players only better. With an MP3 player you can download any song off of the internet and play it on your MP3 player wherever you are. MP3 players have no moving parts so if you are an active person (you know, if you like to walk and stuff) then your music will not jump or skip.
MP3 is a rather new format of music and sound file. It is like a WAV file only it is considerably smaller and most MP3 songs are CD quality. It is easy to download MP3s from the internet as they are posted on lots of different websites and with the use of MP3 search engines such as MP3 Fiend and file sharing tools such as the almighty Napster, MP3 hunting is now almost effortless.
You can also get MP3s from your own CDs by using a certain program to upload your CD songs to your computer (the common term for this is 'ripping' and the technical term for it is &
#39;the legal way'). The best tool I have ever used for this is a program called CDcopy. This program also converts WAV files into MP3s.
I slipped in that little comment about taking songs from your own CDs as 'the legal way' because apparently, downloading MP3s from the net is illegal unless you actually own the single or album that the song is taken from. This might seem a little bit strict to the average music fan but record companies and stores and indeed, some of the bands themselves, have been hitting out at the format saying that MP3s are ruining their buisiness. In fact Napster is constantly being sued by numerous bands and record companies who are not willing to give the format a chance.
I personally feel that MP3 is a great step forward in music history and it will soon revelutionise music listening as we know it. I would recommend purchasing an MP3 player to anyone as you would never have to buy a CD or cassette ever again. The only MP3 player that is available in my area is the Diamond RIO 300. This MP3 player allows you to download songs to it from your computer and then mix and match them in any order you wish. I have heard that there is a lot of better MP3 players available out there though so if there is a wider selection in your area then why not compare them by reading some of the opinions on dooyoo.com before deciding which one is best suited to you.

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